19 comments:

we have a really really old star (it's made out of paper, kid of am oragami style star, still have the origonal box even, it's a noma!) for our tree topper and I tell you when it's day is done we will all be very sad around our place.

my mom still sometimes reminds me of when i was probably about 4 years old and i broke the lid of the heavy irish crystal sugar bowl her own mother brought from ireland to the u.s. in the early 1900s. i know my mom loves me but it must still rankle, that she remembers it so _and_ that she tells me about it. it _was_ a lovely ornament though . . .

rolla-cameron: not repairable. The top was in about 50 pieces - I vacuumed them up and just left the biggest two for the picture. I'd like to see your star - I think it might be the same as my parents have.

maryanne, that's terrible! On the other hand, it makes for an interesting ending to an object's story - "Hey kids, see this bowl? It was brought on a ship from Ireland by your great great grandmother at the turn of the last century. It has no lid because as a kid I loved to play with it and one day I played with it too hard - ha ha ha! was your Grandma ever mad about that."

Ames, I didn't use my angry face. I used my involuntarily tear-filled eyes...had to take a time out there for a minute.

Kate/Bethro, she is pretty upset about it. The reason it broke was that she was trying to put it back on the tree. The reason it was OFF the tree was that she loves it with every fibre of her being. She has a shoebox under her bed filled with real acorns that she has collected. She is almost sorrier than I am, that it is gone.

Shannon - love your script regarding the sugar bowl lid, i'll save it for my kids and their kids and so on.By my reckoning your posting had a 21.43% positive response rate to the "whose family had a memorable breakage of something precious" issue. Funny how we hang on to the losses instead of the sweet and lovely times which I have to think are statistically more likely to occur.

One year we moved in the Fall, and when Christmas rolled around, we all started looking for the boxes of ornaments that my mother had lovingly assembled over the years. Turns out that even though the boxes were labeled prominently on each side and lid, my dad somehow managed to donate them to Goodwill.

My sister and I crushed soda cans and used them for ornaments. We gave my dad so much hell about our pitiful tree. Even though a new collection has evolved, we still talk about all the stuff that disappeared, and we still hang crushed soda cans on the tree just to punk my dad out.